


Never Either So Wretched or So Happy

by storyofapainter



Category: Mad Men
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-21
Updated: 2010-07-21
Packaged: 2017-10-10 17:13:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/102134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storyofapainter/pseuds/storyofapainter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sal grows up in Baltimore....and then finds himself back there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Either So Wretched or So Happy

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted August 29, 2009 on LiveJournal.

  
Sal grows up in Baltimore, the youngest of four.  By the time he is nine years old, his brother has gravitated towards cars and his twin sisters have formed a compact unit in which they communicate without words and do not tolerate interruptions.  Sal is left with his mother and his crayons.  She compliments every drawing in rapid Italian and misses her husband’s silence.  Sal knows his father believes men work with their hands and drawing isn’t working, so he spends his childhood following his mother around the kitchen.  He learns how to cook and, more importantly she insists, how to clean up after himself.  His adolescence passes in a haze of crushed garlic, olive oil stains, and #4 pencils.  When he turns 18, he takes a bus to New York City. 

He is slow to make friends at school, but is happy to spend his days drawing trees and baskets of fruit.  After Christmas, they start work on the human form.  The girl who is modeling causes quite a stir in the stuffy studio.  The professor shouts about the importance of seeing the structure beneath the surface, knowing she is only lines and curves, and “If you could, please, stop gawking long enough to draw, it would be most helpful.”  Sal is proud of what he perceives to be his artistic ability to look past her body.  Laura gracefully turns down the invitations to dinner offered by most of the class, but seeks him out for conversation one Friday.  They walk down the snowy street and discuss Impressionism.  Sal realizes only after she has left him for the subway perhaps she wouldn’t have turned him down.  

He arrives early on Monday, prepared to ask her.  He finds the room empty except for a dark haired boy, pacing the model area and humming.  Sal steps into the classroom and loosens his scarf. 

The boy stops humming.

“Hi.”

“Hello,” Sal shrugs his coat off and hangs it on a hook.  He can feel the boy staring as he pins paper to his easel and rolls up his sleeves. 

“I’m Charlie,” the boys says, leaning on an easel.

“Salvatore.”

“Will your professor be here soon?  There was no one in his office.”

“How hard did you knock?  He likes to sleep in there.”

Charlie laughs, “I’m going to try again.”

Sal waits in the morning light. The sky is a hot-white, brighter than the paper.  He twirls vine charcoal between his fingers and thinks about Laura’s smile. 

He can hear his professor approaching, ruminating loudly about proper placement of the arms while posing.  He enters the classroom, arms billowing about with Charlie following. 

“It is important not to overestimate your limits, Mr. Miller.  Don’t go trying to impress any one with strange poses.  Just do what you can manage.  If you need to itch yourself, you may, but do it quickly.”

“Yes, sir,” Charlie says and Sal can see he is shaking with silent laughter.

“You may go change now.”

“Thank you, sir,” Charlie meets Sal’s eyes with a smirk on his way out of the room.    Sal feels the charcoal snap between his fingers.

The disappointment over the swapping of models is loud.  Professor James silences it with a speech on the glory of Greek vases.  A still amused Charlie is told to pose as though throwing a discus.  He drops his robe and Sal pulls at his neckline.   It’s the stupid sweater his mother bought him for Christmas.  He struggles out of pea-soup wool and stuffs the sweater under his stool. 

But for the first time in his life, Sal can’t see the lines.  There is just a body.  A very male body and he must have the flu because removing the damned sweater didn’t help.  He is trying to find the internal structure, to see past the dips of the chest to the frame.  He wants to touch Charlie’s back and feel the bone.  He feels indecent and he feels frightened.  Sal sweeps his hand down the page, spreading the dust with his fingertips.  He turns the paper around, reduces Charlie to angles, and pretends it wasn’t difficult.   

-

In the late spring of 1960, Sal draws his neighbor shirtless.  Frank takes instructions on to how to hold the pencil and asks him if the rumors about ad men are true. 

“Every one,” Sal says.

At two am, he drinks tap water out of a tall glass, but can’t remember the dream which woke him. 

In the morning, Don tells him to add sex appeal in the form of a bathing suit clad girl and as he agrees, something cold and sudden turns over in his stomach.  He spares less than a seconds thought to the eggs he had for breakfast, before reveling in the idea of a model and asking about Pete Campbell’s bachelor party.  Building on Don’s dislike of the concept, he says, “If a girl is going to shake it in my face, I want to be alone so I can do something.”  He thinks about the blond who smiled at him on the train.  He is walking towards Don’s alcohol before his stomach stops twinging.

Sal adds the Alka-Seltzer to his scotch with two satisfying pings as the new girl shows Greta into the office.  Greta expounds on surveys and Freud and death wishes and Sal hates both her suit and her accent.  

Her theory- people who appear to enjoy living choosing to smoke because they have a secret desire to die- is ridiculous and he tells her as much.  The words feel funny as they leave his mouth, like he is thinking too fast and switching a few around, but they all come out in order and he sips his scotch to wash them away. 

After lunch, not needed in the Lucky Strike meeting, Sal sits at his desk and slides the shirtless Frank out of his portfolio.  He remembers the dream in an instant of skin and heat. 

His breath catches and he scrambles to force the picture back between the leather covers.  He hears the tracing paper crumple, but can’t stop his frantic hands until the case is closed and stuffed into a cupboard.  He feels twenty again, panicky his drawings could give him away.  The first girl who came back to his apartment had asked to see his portfolio.  He immediately pulled the cases from beneath his bed, too taken in by her presence to remember to leave the last one alone.  She reached for the blue canvas first and Sal watched the silent “oh” push its way past her lips.  He shuffled the charcoal and paper men into a pile.  “They’re not all like that.  Those were for class.”  She had blushed slightly, then, at her neck, told him they were wonderful, and kissed him.

In the morning, Sal decided being an artist gave one certain liberties and kept the nudes.

The Slipper Room is full of women and the men who love them.  Sal swears he’ll take a girl home, accepting the pat on the back and accompanying cheers.  When he doesn’t make good on the promise, everyone is too drunk to notice. On the train, he pretends he isn’t watching a young couple holding hands in the corner.  He doesn’t know if he was really looking for a girl and didn’t find one or if he actually wanted to be alone tonight.  He is good at saying what the world expects to hear and sometimes the mask feels so close to his skin, he can’t remember how to take it off.  

-  
   
According to Don Draper, what women want is any excuse to get closer.  Lois Sadler accomplishes this by listening to his phone calls and pretending she thinks Accounting is near the Art Department.  It is flattering she wandered all the way down just to look at him, but Sal is still relieved he conducts his personal phone calls in Italian. 

When his phone rings at noon, Sal expects his mother, insisting the locks are sticking or there are mice in the walls. Instead it’s Lois, a fake phone call, and an invitation.  He softly agrees to celebrate Peggy’s copy and drops his phone onto the receiver. 

Sal smokes through lunch and thinks about steamships. 

Still caught in low beams and pillars, Sal takes a taxi to The Roosevelt.  The lounge is indeed beautiful: off-white and gold, with bamboo stenciled on the walls, and black marble on the floor.  Elliot is drinking alone and Sal decides one before the party won’t hurt.  He stays for dinner because has anyone ever resisted an expense account?

Despite being questioned about it, Sal is happy, swirling the Sambuca and laughing about the meanings imbued on expresso beans.  He takes a brave stab at the future and tells Elliot what he has not said aloud since he was made Art Director. His own shop where words are expendable and art is king.  He expects a laugh, maybe a little sympathy, but instead Elliot insists they go upstairs and see Central Park at night.  Like Elliot's critique of his personality, there is a line out of place and the drawing skews left. 

Sal doesn’t know why, if the view is so important, he should see it now or why he should at all-he has lived in New York for a long time and is no stranger to sky scrapers or views-but his stomach has turned itself into a stone and the blood rushes out of his finger tips.  For one second, before he pulls his hands away, Sal thinks Elliot will just sip the Sambuca and move on.  

But Elliot is damn serious and too calm.  Sal is aware of everyone in the room and the fact they all have eyes is upsetting.  _It’s the beauty of this part.  You get to stop talking_, Elliot is telling him, but Sal lives in the cushion created by words.  Where he can tell stories and people tend to believe him.

Sal is aware of what his body insists on feeling, but it doesn’t mean he likes it or wants it.  Elliot does not know what he’s thinking because Elliot is past thinking and onto “I’ll show you.”  A young couple walks past the table.  She is wearing peach and Sal can’t look, feeling so faraway. 

Sal is afraid the words will stop working.  Someone won’t believe him and he will lose the life he has carefully tethered around himself. He fears he will be blamed even though he didn’t choose it.   Sal says it has been a pleasure, but he doesn’t mean it.

Standing at 45th and Madison, the question which has buzzed beneath his skin since he was eighteen and the boy posing in his art class tried to kiss him, rises and repeats inside his jaw:_ howdotheyknowhowdotheyknowhowdotheyknow?_

Marty, deflated from Lois’ lack of interest had said it earlier today- Sal doesn’t need an expensive tie to attract women.  They line up.  But no one has fixed him yet.  He still dreams about broad shoulders and big hands and keeps those drawings under his bed.  He remembers the girls in church, heads covered, hands folded, sneaking glances down the pew and trying to have him meet them in the chapel. He was shocked to discover he was supposed to want to.  He looked at the breasts the other boys were critiquing and just saw the sweater.  Years ago now, there was a girl who would have married him.  It ended in tears when Sal lied about seeing another woman.  The weeks when he could not believe he let her go, layered themselves between those when he knew alone was dangerous, but safer. 

And now- now his apartment is so big and there is room for Elliot’s smile and his hands and _I’ll show you_.  Sal takes aspirin and buries his head under his pillows.  He hasn’t prayed about this in years because if he kept it quiet, maybe God would forget about it too.  He lies in bed and apologizes over and over again and seeks forgiveness for whatever mistake he made which led him into this suffering.  He wakes up in the morning, but can’t remember sleeping.  

He calls his mother at lunch and just listens to her voice.

-

Sal has been homesick since summer, so at Thanksgiving he flies to Baltimore for the first time in the four years since his father died. 

They eat with the Russo’s, a neighboring family whose youngest daughter looks in on Maria Romano.  Sal doesn’t remember much of Kitty from when he was growing up, but he played with her older brothers.  She was only eight years old when he went to New York, little more than an annoyance and a cry baby.   

“I remember one summer afternoon,” she tells him, sitting in her parent’s front room, “Nick had tripped me and my knee was bleeding.  You gave me part of the chocolate bar you had in your pocket.”

Sal thinks about nostalgia and the ache. “I don’t remember.” 

“It’s okay,” she tells him, but her smile fades.

“She’s not married, the poor girl,” Maria tells Sal, when they have returned to her apartment and Sal has poured two glasses of Sambuca, “There’s nothing wrong with her.  No, she was engaged, but he,” she whispers, even though it is just the two of them, “went to prison.  I knew he was no good.   It hasn’t been easy for her.  She should get married.” 

“Ma.”

“Salvatore.  I am simply telling you a story.”

“Yes, ma.”  He kisses her cheek and goes to bed with his drink.  His mother thinks she sees wives everywhere. 

Two weeks later, Maria slips on a patch of ice and breaks her ankle in two places.  She insists, once she is healed, she will move to New York where Sal can take care of her.  Sal ignores her faulty logic and visits again for Christmas. 

On Christmas Eve, Kitty brings Maria a gold and red wrapped box.  Maria insists Kitty stay for coffee and cake and announces “Sal is going to move me to New York.”

“Ma, it’s not certain.”

“Sush!” 

“How wonderful, Mrs. Romano.  I’ve never been to New York.  I hear it’s beautiful.  Especially at night.”

“It is,” Sal says as both women look to him for confirmation.

Maria motions Kitty closer to her arm chair and grasps Kitty’s hand, “You will come too.”

“What would I do in New York?”     
   
“You can marry Sal, yes?”

Sal almost misses the saucer with his coffee cup, “Ma!”

“You aren’t married!  You should be.  You are so kind.  And she wants to marry you.  Look.”

Kitty is standing perfectly still.

“I’m sorry,” Sal tells her as Maria tuts.

Kitty blinks and moves all at once, “No.  It’s fine.  I should go home.  Thank you for the coffee, Mrs Romano.  Merry Christmas.”

Sal gets her coat and follows her into the hallway.

“You know what my mother is like.”

“I do,” she says, lips very tight. 

“Good night.” 

Kitty takes three steps and turns around. 

“Salvatore.  I... I would.” 

She does not look back when she reaches the staircase.  Sal dreams he is wearing her coat.  He calls her in the morning and take her to lunch on the 27th, before catching his plane. 

He marries her that spring, in Baltimore.  His sisters drive up from Florida with their husbands and children (even now, they live next door to one another), but his brother stays in Detroit. His mother cries through the entire ceremony and they all move to the New York the next day.   
   
Kitty is sweet; always smiling and quick to laugh.  She agrees to stay in the apartment and knows it means they are not having children.  She darns his socks and finds his advice about her clothing to be charming.  They decorate the walls in wild colors and end up in a paint fight. 

Sal loves those moments, but sex is as awkward as it has ever been for him.  He draws airplanes and wonders if it’s like this for everyone; if the hype was invented by someone like Don Draper.  Either way, there are days when he forgets she’s there and turns around to find a woman needle pointing on his couch.  He suspects knowing the latter would hurt her more.

When Harry and his new found television position bring Belle Jolie into the office, Sal catches Elliot staring at his ring.  He drinks his coffee and waits for the stupid show to start so Elliot will have something else at which to gawk.  Elliot only asks him how he is, but it feels cruel.  Elliot is judging the choice he made and Sal knows the verdict is coward.

-

Turns out, Burt Cooper has a Rothko in his office.  Sal is not at all surprised Dale didn’t recognize it or that no one appreciates it’s a Rothko and, my God, he could touch it if he dared.  He was taught to find the story in a picture and he loves Rothko, but he can’t explain this like he can a Monet.  Ken steps closer to the painting and gives Sal the reason for the space in his chest which expands when he looks into the red.

Sal expects Ken to be holding an answer key. 

He doesn’t remember until Ken says it in the elevator: he’s a writer.  Sal can’t remember the specifics of Ken’s story, but he knows it was both appealing and harrowing and despite his phrasing, he was one of those people who was jealous.

When Ken wanders into the Art Department, Sal squashes the desire to ask if he’s lost or if he has ever been to this floor before.  Sal entertains Cooper knows and Ken is here about an escape plan, but Ken is talking about the elevator and Sal’s own words.  They sound better coming from Ken.  Then, like understanding Rothko, Ken understands him.  Sal wants the details on why Ken thinks he’s different, but Ken isn’t absorbing his denial, he’s breathing deep and biting his lip until he sticks his hand out and offers Sal the inside of his mind on crisp paper. 

He never imagined Ken to be fragile.  Sal wants to talk to him, but not here, with people like Kurt and Smitty roaming the halls.  He calls Ken back and knows every bachelor is a sucker for home cooking.  
   
When he tells Kitty Ken is coming to dinner, she says “Ken.  Is he the one who was talking to the girl who couldn’t feel her cheeks?” and laughs.  Sal doesn’t find it very funny. 

He tells her about Ken’s story because it’s a live animal in his bag, clawing to get out. 

“I need quiet to read it, Kitty.  You don’t mind, do you?” Sal asks as he washes the dishes. 

Her face freezes for a second.  “I thought I could read it too.  So we can all discuss it.”

“Ken is sensitive about who reads his stories.  I’m the only one at work he has shown this to.  I can’t break his confidence.  If you really want to read it, you can ask him on Sunday.” 

Alone, Sal holds the pages and breathes.  It’s another sad story, about the falling short of things which should have been perfect.  He spends the next three days talking around the plot and not seeing Kitty sighing.

Sal settles on spaghetti because everyone eats spaghetti.  (He will take his mother’s recipe to the grave- he always adds the cinnamon when Kitty has her back turned.)   

Ken is late, of course, and he feels a foolish need to change when Kitty announces the orange tie is her favorite, even though he knows Kitty loves it.  Ken brings Kitty flowers and asks him for beer.  Sal had an image of them drinking red wine with dinner and plans to impose it. 

Maybe how he and Kitty met isn’t a boring story, but he knows it.  He hardly knows a thing about Ken.  He bring Ken closer, to taste his sauce.  Sal can be fragile too.

After dinner, he asks about Harry.  He feels Kitty slip her hand into his, but the next moment he’s gesturing and must have let go.  Kitty asks where he lives, which Sal knows, so he brings the topic back to Cooper and the possibility of Ken having a meeting of his own. Kitty mentions her damn cousin and he just wants to hear Ken talk because he listens to Kitty all the time, so he dismisses her and returns the focus to Ken. 

Sal’s life, both professional and personal, has always been about drawing.  He can’t imagine not working in the medium, but Ken seems to have drifted into both his job and his hobby.  Sal can’t let him go now, when this is the surface which need to be broken.  He offers him a cigarette and lets Ken light his.   Ken doesn’t take the coffee or the pie and it is a long train ride back to the city, so Sal walks him to the door, but can’t explain why he feels empty when it closes. It’s not hunger, so he turns down the pie. 

This is a mistake, as Kitty’s voice tenses and if she wanted him to get her a slice of pie, she only needed to ask.  He starts to cross to the kitchen and she stands in front of him, blinks away tears, and tells him she knows he doesn’t see her properly. 

Sal knows she wants him to agree she is very interesting and then list the reasons why, but he can’t find the words.  Kitty looks right at him and he knows, despite anything she may say, she is hurt. 

He is light headed at how fast the evening turned away from wonderful, but he moves towards the napkins first.  When Ken’s lighter falls onto the table, he puts it in his pocket to give back tomorrow. 

He tells Ken to call Kitty because she will like the attention. He doesn’t know what exactly happened last night, but he wants to stop her from becoming upset and saying something else piercing.  When Ken says he imagines his house would be like theirs, Sal, again, wants to find out exactly what led Ken to his conclusion.  Inviting him back is the polite thing to do, but Sal knows it will have to be on Kitty’s terms.  The lighter is heavy in his pocket, but Sal doesn’t give it back. 

Kitty asks him for the story.  He hands it over with a smile and a flourish, hating her for knowing this secret.  Maria had come over during the day and after dinner she passes out on their couch.  They watch television and he makes sure, even in the dark, Kitty is sewing.  He lights his cigarette and looks at lighter.  Before he goes to sleep, he hides it in the pocket of an old coat he can’t throw away because he loves the lining.

Turns out, Ken doesn’t miss it. 

-

Sal is on his way downstairs to continue drawing rocket ships when he runs into a very smug Ken.  “There are nine boxes of donuts in the break room,” he announces.  “I got the Dunkin’ Donuts account.”  

Sal takes a Lemonaire and a napkin and is surprised when Kurt speaks without someone addressing him first.  As the room catches on to Kurt and Peggy’s date, comfortable laughter sets in. Peggy is pouring herself coffee and when she half turns around, her smile is brief and ill-fitting.  Sal thinks it’s sweet.  They are so young and if she wants an evening of broken English, she should have it.

Kurt seems as mystified by their take on these events as they are by his speaking patterns.  “I’m homosexual,” he says, like it solves something. 

When the laughter dies in Sal’s throat, it is a little like gagging. 

Before Joan lets the girls at the donuts, Sal throws the Lemonaire away.  He locks himself in his office until 5:00, but can’t draw a single rocket. 

Sal burns dinner and Kitty becomes frustrated because he won’t tell her what’s wrong.  He stalks into the living room and wheels on her when she follows him.  His mouth is open to shout, “Will you stop with the damn questions?” but he catches himself on the wideness of her eyes and drops onto the couch. 

It’s not Ken’s declaration of not wanting to work with queers and it’s not Smitty’s innuendo there are more homos lurking in the business- it’s Kurt saying “I make love with the man. Not the woman.”  Sal has never made love with a man and he suspects he hasn’t made love with a woman, either.

Sal looks into Kitty’s frightened face and as he kisses her, he tries to see Kurt. 

It doesn’t help.

-

He’s not really going home because his mother and his wife are back in New York and he seems to have picked up a new identity as a byproduct of stewardess error and Don Draper playing along, but it’s still the city where he was born and he answers Shelly with emphasis in the right places. 

When Don reveals it’s his brother-in-law’s bag, Sal realizes Don knows exactly what he’s doing.  It’s a different city; why not be a different person? 

At the Belvedere, the young woman at the front desk explains, “There was some flooding, earlier.  A guest left his bathtub running.  We have to move you to the ninth floor, Mr. Draper.  I am so sorry.”  Don smiles at her and dead pans, “I guess this means we won’t be having a sleepover,” to Sal before telling him to be in the lobby at seven.

At dinner, it is incredible how Don becomes Bill.  It’s not just his words, it’s in his entire body.  Sal wonders if any of the personal stories from Don’s presentations are true or if they are just words which fit well together.  He knows Don is good at saying what the clients want to hear, but this is something else entirely.  Sal lets Don take the lead in creating these new lives and before he knows it, they have two stewardesses and an air plane pilot convinced they work for the FBI.  Sal has never felt so important. 

Sal knows Shelly doesn’t have a room and Don knows it too and Sal knows Don knows he knows and Shelly probably knows too.  He also knows Lorelai was interested, but he’s not about to cheat on Kitty, especially, he thinks suddenly, before sending the thought deep into his skull, not with a woman.  He has drunk too much and feels twice his size as he stands in the elevator with Don and Shelly.  A bellhop steps in and Sal just wants to start laughing about the uniforms.  He looks at the ceiling and concentrates on not talking until the bellhop departs. 

When Sal opens his door, it takes him a second to remember where he saw the bellhop before.  The bellhop reassures Sal he has not broken the air conditioner and he is concentrating very hard on putting together a tip when there are suddenly too many shoes. 

Sal doesn’t know what to do.  He can feel the bellhop’s face an inch away and this man is not waiting for a tip.  His brain lists a series of statements and questions which could be used to diffuse the situation, number one being Kitty, but when Sal looks up, his body acts instead and he leans into the kiss.

Sal needs to say something.  Explain this to himself; find a phrase which will make it okay, but he is no longer thinking in words.  He just knows he has never felt until right now and this is what a waist should feel like and his vest is open and his pen has burst in his pocket.

The word he’s looking for is, strangely enough, "Airplane." 

If Sal had known this was a view of the park, he would have had another drink and taken a look.  Sal leans back on the bed, as the bellhop lifts his shirt, skims across his undershirt and sticks his left hand into Sal's boxers.  He feels flesh on that flesh.  They kiss again, there is a ringing noise, and the hand lets go.  Sal thinks alarm clock, expects to wake up and when he doesn’t, decides this is God punishing him.

Sal manages to stand up and is tucking his shirt in when there is a rap on the glass.  Don gestures for him to move and Sal doesn't need to turn around to know the bellhop has come out of the bathroom and his running towards his jacket.  When Sal dares to look back at the window, Don is gone.  Sal doesn’t get his vest buttoned and as he stands in the street, he feels lonelier than ever. 

When Sal falls onto his bed after the fire alarm, he stays there.  He wakes up with a half hour until the London Fog meeting and wonders if this is what his life is going to be like from now on.  He rushes around his room, but last night waits everywhere and it’s only the meeting which stops Sal from trying to relive it. 

At the meeting, Morris asks if he has a family.  Sal says, “Not yet.  I have a wife,” because it is automatic and technically true.  Don turns his head and slants his eyes and Sal knows Don is going to ask him about it.

Morris has fears about the growth potential of London Fog and Sal quotes Balzac to reassure him.  The quote stays with him for the tour and the cab ride and take off.  He thinks about everything he is afraid of and how it keeps shrinking even though Don saw him through the hotel window and what the world thinks of people like him hasn’t changed at all since last night. 

Sal opens the blind to look outside, but it wakes up Don.  Don leans forward and tells him to be completely honest.  Sal could say he was Sam Fleischman last night.  Drunk, in a hotel room, in a city in which he didn’t live, with a broken air conditioner, the bellhop who fixed it had kissed him, but it hadn’t meant a thing.  Today, he is Salvatore Romano.  Sober, he is flying home to New York the morning after kissing back, after cursing whoever decided to smoke in bed, because if there hadn’t been the fire alarm, he knows  they would not have stopped.  Don Draper is the kind of man to whom one tells the truth.  He nods.

But Don starts talking about London Fog. A man on the subway, a girl’s legs, and then, there it is, the lesson of the story.  Sal nods and nods and Don is not going to tell anyone.  Don doesn’t care what he saw.  It’s just a warning about not getting caught and then Don goes back to thinking his deep thoughts.  Sal feels like he has joined some sort of club and spends the rest of the flight drawing.

In the office, Kinsey compliments the ad and Sal knows he is hoping for something similar to happen to him on his way home.  Harry implies a trip with Draper must have been interesting, but Sal has learned a lot about what needs to be said and what doesn’t.   
   
Kinsey points to the man and asks what he will look like.  Sal thinks about who he would want to flash him on the subway.  When Kinsey says he meant physical features, all Sal says is, “Handsome” and lets Kinsey decide it for himself. 

“How was your trip?”  Kitty asks when he walks into their apartment.  Sal looks at her smile, at the walls, at his own hands.  The lines are resharpening.  She is waiting in front of the hall closet, his hat still in her hands, “Sal, are you okay?”

“I’m a little tired,” he says, “but it was worth the trip.”

“Good.  I have dinner almost ready.  You go and sit.”

Sal sits at the table and looks at the things he owns and fully realizes, for the first time in his life, none of them will make him happy. 

He is supposed to make a choice between last night and the rest of his life. 

He is supposed to choose this.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from a Balzac quote.
> 
> Thanks to ohmygodmuffin for the beta.


End file.
